I Once Was Lost

Imagine, for a second, that all your friends are addicted to cocaine. All of them. They spend all day talking about, how awesome it is, when they’re going to do it next, and generally treating it as the manifestation of the second coming. They’ve been doing this for years.

You, meanwhile, have been avoiding it. You let them talk about it and feel equal parts admiration for their zeal and pity for their dependency. You have seen them get addicted, and for that reason, and that reason alone, you have abstained.

Now imagine that one day you came home and a huge pile of cocaine had spontaneously generated on your table. Somehow, inexplicably, all this cocaine was available to you. Maybe it was God’s providence, maybe it was fate, maybe the flying spaghetti monster’s noodly appendage is a cornucopia of awesome that has yielded its bounty. Here is this pile of cocaine, free of charge. And it’s right there on your table. How much more convenient can that be?

Naturally, you’re curious. You start thinking, why not? If everybody is doing it, then surely it can’t be that bad, right? You don’t want to miss the zeitgeist.

Then again, you know that as soon as you touch it, you’ll be addicted. It will consume your life and demand sacrifices no man should make.

Then you look up from your tortured contemplation and see that it’s right there. And because flesh is weak and you weren’t much for resisting indulgence, you jump into it face first and embrace the sweet chords of oblivion.

A few days ago, Hulu put the first four seasons of Lost online. I ran through Season 1 in about five days. By my calculations, it will take me another 4,320 minutes to get through the rest of the seasons, or roughly 72 hours of continuous, uninterrupted watching.

In sum, I will probably not see anyone or leave my apartment for the foreseeable future. And if you see me walking around with white powder grafted to my nose, I’m, uh, just really committed to this metaphor, I swear.